High school reunion

IT'S the end of summer and by now you should already have attended one of those events that you’d been trying to avoid but just couldn’t: high school reunion.

Lorenzo Niñal

Insoymada

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There are different types of reunions– elementary reunions, college reunions, family reunions, glee club reunions, Avid Fans of Duran Duran reunions, Students with Unpaid Canteen Debts reunions.

But all these reunions don’t come close to high school reunions as far as the oh-my-God-what-the-hell-happened-to-you aspect of the gathering is concerned.

Kindergarten class reunions would be fun except that when you’re in your 30s, 40s, or 50s, you have long forgotten how your classmates looked like. You have to come to the gathering wearing a nametag to be identified, only to realize nobody remembers your name as well. Then you have to bring your kindergarten yaya for their kindergarten yaya reunion, too.

Elementary reunions are boring because nothing really happened during those six years except the gardening and the tinikling dances. And it doesn’t help that your mother was your teacher in Grade 4. In college, people believe they are grownups already, so the concept of reunion actually starts there.

It’s in high school where everything worth remembering happens.

It’s your high school classmates that you are curious about today. How’s the class valedictorian now that you know life is more than just memorizing the periodic table of elements? Has the ultimate high school crush retained his killer smile after all these years? And guys, how we love to be with the Syota ng Bayan once again!

In high school, you share everything with each other, things you care about in life, your dreams, especially. You attend high school reunions because you want to know what happened to those dreams your classmates promised to follow.

You don’t attend high school reunions to experience those crazy high school moments again because you know you’re too old for that kind of fun now.

It’s not a coincidence that the most successful in the batch are the ones eager for a reunion, while those who haven’t quite made it yet are the ones who try to forego seeing their old friends until such time they are sure they are no longer the losers that they were in high school.

Me, I don’t attend high school reunions, not because I remain to this day as the same penniless, guitar-slinging, beer-guzzling promdi boy that I was in high school. I don’t attend high school reunions because I have never been invited to one.

I’ve no idea what happened to my high school batch after our drunken graduation party many years ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tells me everybody dropped dead from hangover the next day.

What I’ve kept till this day is the friendship of a small group of high school barkada. We see each other regularly we don’t call these drinking sessions “reunions” anymore. And we still gush over our high school crushes, something our wives and our arthritis will never know.

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